[To TES EDITOR OF TICS " SPECTATOR:] think you—England generally—should
know some- thing more than is now known of the strength of the Free-trade party in Australia. The present controversy in England is watched with the greatest interest and- yes—anxiety by many who, like myself, have for years been fighting to raise Australian fiscal policy to the British level. The attitude of the Spectator on the subject—though only what its character and history made certain—is welcome to us all. I think it was your paper which pointed out that the artists were all on the side of freedom. You will see in a book I am sending that in 1900 I showed that the poets were on the same side. On December 16th I was re-elected by New South Wales to the Senate by 191,000 votes,—a solid, absolute Free-trade vote, given as such to me, a keen opponent of Chamberlainism. In ". Commerce and the Empire," recently ablished by myself in London, I have tried to throw the results of my nearly twenty years' Australian controversy and study into a form likely to help. I think I have put forward some useful information. The contest seems to me to involve greater issues, and to be of much greater importance, than has yet been grasped. Pardon my troubling you. I am presuming you have some of my
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